Ansel Adams' Lens into LA Architecture

Dennis Doordan, an architectural and design historian, analyzes Los Angeles architecture through photographs Ansel Adams took on assignment there in the 1940s in a free public lecture titled “Looking at Ansel Adams Looking at LA” on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 4 p.m. at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. No RSVP is necessary for the lecture, which will last an hour. Light refreshments will be served.

Doordan, professor emeritus of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, said Adams did not appreciate the so-called “duck” architecture, buildings shaped like the product or service sold inside, that later became popular during postmodernism in the 1960s.

On assignment in Los Angeles in the 1940s, Adams wrote: Fortune magazine “wanted pictures of the exotic (local) architecture such as the Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood. There were many such awful examples around Los Angeles, and I drove hundreds of miles in pursuit of them.”

Doordan, who graduated from Stanford University before earning a doctorate in the history of architecture from Columbia University, is a commissioner for Santa Barbara’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

He authored a historical survey, “Twentieth Century Architecture,” and serves as a co-editor of the journal Design Issues.

“Beyond the Wilderness: Ansel Adams in 1940s Los Angeles” is on view at the museum through March 28.